Navarin, Artas, Monembasia, Third Messenger. The Christian tribes Are Corinth, and Thebes are carried by Of Lebanon and the Syrian wilderness in revolt;-Damascus, Hems, Aleppo assault, And every Islamite who made his dogs Fat with the flesh of Galilean slaves Passed at the edge of the sword: the lust of blood Tremble;---the Arab menaces Medina, The Ethiop has intrenched himself in Sennaar, Which made our warriors drunk is And keeps the Egyptian rebel well em quenched in death; But like a fiery plague breaks out anew In deeds which make the Christian cause look pale In its own light. The garrison of Patras Has store but for ten days, nor is there hope But from the Briton: at once slave and tyrant His wishes still are weaker than his fears, Or he would sell what faith may yet remain ployed, From the oaths broke in Genoa and in Like birds before a storm, the Santons A Dervise, learned in the Koran, preaches That it is written how the sins of Islam Must raise up a destroyer even now. The Greeks expect a Saviour from the west, Who shall not come, men say, in clouds and glory, But in the omnipresence of that spirit In which all live and are. Ominous signs Are blazoned broadly on the noonday sky: The ruins of the city where he reigned has reaped sun; The costly harvest his own blood It has rained blood; and monstrous matured, births declare Not the sower, Ali-who has bought a The secret wrath of Nature and her The shadows doubtless of the unborn time He saw, or dreamed he saw, the Turkish Cast on the mirror of the night. While yet The fight hung balanced, there arose a storm Which swept the phantoms from among the stars. At the third watch the spirit of the plague Was heard abroad flapping among the tents; Those who relieved watch found the sentinels dead. The last news from the camp is, that a thousand Have sickened, and―― Enter a fourth Messenger. Mahmud. ghost, dim shadow Of some untimely rumour, speak! admiral Wegaze on danger through the mist of fear, And thou, pale | And multiply upon our shattered hopes The images of ruin. Come what will! To-morrow and to-morrow are as lamps Set in our path to light us to the edge Through rough and smooth, nor can we suffer aught Fourth Messenger. One comes Fainting with toil, covered with foam and blood: He stood, he says, upon Chelonites' that groan Under the Briton's frown, and all their waters Then trembling in the splendour of the moon, When as the wandering clouds unveiled or hid Her boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets Stalk through the night in the horizon's glimmer, Mingling fierce thunders and sulphureous gleams, And smoke which strangled every infant wind That soothed the silver clouds through At length the battle slept, but the Awoke, and drove his flock of thunder clouds Over the sea-horizon, blotting out Of Wisdom, Pity's altar stood: Serve not the unknown God in vain, But pay that broken shrine again, Love for hate and tears for blood. sayest even as we. Ahasuerus. No more! Mahmud. But raised above Of thee and me, the future and the past; But look on that which cannot change -the One, thy fellow men Ahasuerus. Of Greek and Frank philosophy; thou The flowers, and thou measurest the This firmament pavilioned upon chaos, stars; Thou severest element from element; Of desolation and of loveliness, With all its cressets of immortal fire, As Calpe the Atlantic clouds-this And when man was not, and how man Of suns, and worlds, and men, and became The monarch and the slave of this low And all its narrow circles—it is much- art beasts, and flowers, With all the silent or tempestuous work ings By which they have been, are, or cease to be, Is but a vision ;-all that it inherits Were I not what I am; but the unborn Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and Cradled in fear and hope, conflicting Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor storms, less Who shall unveil? Nor thou, nor I, The future and the past are idle shadows Of thought's eternal flight-they have nor any Mighty or wise. I apprehended not That thou art no interpreter of dreams; Can make the future present- let it no being: Nought is but that which feels itself to be. Mahmud. What meanest thou? Thy words stream like a tempest Of dazzling mist within my brain-they shake The earth on which I stand, and hang Moreover thou disdainest us and ours; platest. avail ? What can they Ahasuerus. Disdain thee?-not the They cast on all things surest, brightest, worm beneath my feet! best, Fall of vast bastions and precipitous towers, The shock of crags shot from strange enginery, hoofs, Is that which has been, or will be, to The clash of wheels, and clang of armèd that Which is the absent to the present. And crash of brazen mail as of the wreck Thought Alone, and its quick elements, Will, Of adamantine mountains -the mad Passion, Reason, Imagination, cannot die; appears, blast Of trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds, And shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood, The stuff whence mutability can weave All that it hath dominion o'er, worlds, And one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear, worms, Empires, and superstitions. What has As of a joyous infant waked and playing With its dead mother's breast, and now more loud thought To do with time, or place, or circumstance? Wouldst thou behold the future?-ask and have! Knock and it shall be opened — look and, lo! The coming age is shadowed on the past As on a glass. The written fortunes of thy house and Of regal port has cast himself beneath The stream of war. Another proudly clad In golden arms spurs a Tartarian barb Into the gap, and with his iron mace Directs the torrent of that tide of men, And seems he is-Mahomet! Ahasuerus. What thou seest Is but the ghost of thy forgotten dream. A dream itself, yet less, perhaps, than that The sound Thou call'st reality. Thou mayst As of the assault of an imperial city, The roar of giant cannon; the earthquaking behold How cities, on which Empire sleeps enthroned, Bow their towered crests to mutability. |